THE OUTLAWS:

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18629, 26 July 1930, Page 9

THE OUTLAWS:

By LEO WALMSLEY.

All day the two seals had kept far out from land, beyond the steamer tracks, watchfully asleep, with their heads scarcely visible above the smooth surface of the windless sea. But with the fall of dusk they swam stealthily in towards the shore, pausing at last to the south of a cove, formed by two V-shaped, and not party sunken reefs, whose ends narrowed to the foot of a dark looming cliff, silhouetted against the starshine. Between them and the cliff a small boat was moving slowly seawards, and from the boat, breaking the tranquillity of the night, came sounds of human voices, and a heavy thumping, as though the water was being struck at regular intervals with an oar. Nearer still to the seals a large black float lay upon the water, and from this extended to the north a series of smaller floats, continuing until lost in the complete darkness near the farther reef. Well did the old mother seal know the sounds that assailed her quick ears.', Well clid she know the significance of the float, and the smaller floats that stretched to the north, forming a barrier across the mouth of that familiar cove. Well did she know the taste of ■ the fat cod. and pollack, and salmonj trout, which, having driven the shoals ! of herring-fry into the shallows of the ) cove, were now being frightened by J the fishermen back towards the net, ! which had been set at dusk. ! But to the young seal all this was I completely unfamiliar. He had been ! born on a lonely, rocky island in the ' far north, and his training in the craft I of a sea-hunter so far had been confined to the shallows of wild, uninhabited coasts, and the outer seas, where the mother had always give wide berth to the steamers and big fishing craft. Yet the sounds he heard now did not frighten him: they served only to whet the intense excitement he had left since they had first set off for the coast. Some now and very special adventure was at hand. It was related he knew to these very sounds he heard; still more important it was related to his hunger. And ha wished j for the sake of his hunger it would i begin soon. He watched his mother eagerly, impatient for the sign for action. She. however, showed no impatience. Practised though she was in the perilous business that lay ahead, she was too profoundly intelligent to take a single unnecessary risk. She would not have done so had she been alone, ! and this an ordinary occasion. Toj night she had a lesson to give her son, j implying more than a double responI sibility. She lay almost motionless, I with only her small oval head visible j upon the water. Her son lay close to j her left side. The boat continued to j move out towards the net. The voices | became louder, the thumping more ini tense. But before the boat reached the net itself it slewed to the north, continued to move in that direction, parallel to the net, and at last stopped, near to the northernmost reef. The thumping ceased. And now, very slowly, the

boat began to move south again. The net was being hauled. Very stealthily the mother seal swain landwards. Stealthily. Stealthily. It was as though she knew that she was outlawed; that her human enemies had j put a price upon her head, upon the , head of every member of her tribe. She steered a little south of the buoy. Profoundly excited, yet just as stealthily, her son followed close. They were in shallow water now. The end of the j southernmost reef, bare at low-water, was beneath them. The anchor, to ; which the buoy was attached, actually \ lay upon the reef. The mother seal ■ lightly touched its cable with her body, J and paused while her son did likewise! | for its was necessary that he should | learn what a man-made rope was like ; to realise its significance to the busi- j ness in hand. Before moving on again she took a j final look at the boat. It was still ' progressing south, but very, very slow- j ly. There was time enough, she judg- j ed, for all she wished to do. Ap- i proaching the buoy from its shortwards j side, she dived over the edge of the I sunken reef into the deep water of the cove, turned slightly seawards again until her sensitive whiskers lightly brushed the net itself, and. still under water, began to swim steadily along it. Her son followed like a shadow. He. too. touched the net with his whiskers, for he knew instinctively that this was a lesson he was receiving, and that his mother had purposely led so that he should do so. It puzzled him, as the rope had puzzled him. It did not frighten him. It was so light, so fragile. He did not think that it could be dangerous. He was quick enough, however, to understand its purpose when, past his mother’s shoulders, he saw, silhouetted by its phosphorescent slime, a cod-fish, caught by its gills in the meshes, and struggling to get free. Yet all that he understood was that he • was being initiated into a very easy method of obtaining food. He forged ahead, for it was his prerogative that the first fruit of any hunt should he his. The mother, however, neatly shouldered him away, for it is one thing to eat a fish that has been caught in free water, and a vastly different thing to eat one that is still fast to a man-owned net, with the owner near at hand. She did not try to remove it in its entirety. She knew that any abnormal movement of the net would be carried along to the hands of the hauling fishermen. She mouthed it close up to the back of its head. Then, i with one neat bite, she cut the body I clean away, and as neatly swallowed it. i In the complete process she had not j touched the net even with her whiskers. She swam on. and the next fish, another cod, she left to her son. The seals, perhaps, are the most intelligent of all wild animals; and par- j ticularly is this evident in their re- ! lationship to their arch-enemy, man. ' The young seal, still without comprehending fully the danger of the net,

knew this his mother had bitten the cod off at the neck for a definite reason. He knew that for the same reason she was avoiding contact with the net. He treated his own cod in a precisely similar manner, leaving its head enmeshed. The mother seal led stealthily on for some distance, to where three pollack were caught close together. She gave him the first. She took the other two herself. After she had done this she remained perfectly motionless for a moment, lightly touching the net with her whiskers. She could feel the steady tugging of the fisherman hauling the net in. But the boat was still at a safe distance, she judged; and she moved on, allowing her son now to take the lead. She did not. it may be assumed, observe the salmon-trout. Even a mother seal cannot look at two places at the same time: and it chanced that as her sen went by. her attention was on the net, and the salmon was not in the net, but approaching it from the shore. What the son saw was a stream of phosphorescence like the tail of a meteor ahead and to the left of him, clear of where he believed the net to be. He saw no danger. How should he know that, some distance ahead, the

fishermen when shooting their net had accidentally formed a ' short, slack bight, eo that a length of it ran shorewards at right angles to the rest? To a predatory animal the sight of a moving quarry acts reflexively. There is no time for conscious thought. The seal shot ahead to meet the salm :;i. The salmon saw him. It swerved. The seal also swerved, but missed its attempted bite. The salmon turned almost completely round. The seal’s whiskers touched it, but again the fish moved clear, and now, with the seal a length behind it, it put all Its energy into a desperate straight ahead spurt, travelling parallel to the main length of the net. And to salmon, and seal, and to the mother seal, following her son, that accidental bight of the net was alike unexpected and invisible. The young seal was gaining. The mother, despite that such a case was not in her plan, made no effort to interfere. It did not alarm her that theq were drawing very near to boat. So long as they did not touch the net they might pass right under the boat in perfect safety. The son by now v/as almost level with the salmon's tail. With a terrific spurt he drew alongside the terrified fish. He bit. And it was

FASCINATING SEA STORY

in that very moment that the salmon’s he., d touched the net. forcing the slack bight forward, drawing the folds of it gently about itself, and over ihe young seal, as effectively as the tentacles of an octopus. But at first the seal was not aware that his had happened. The mother had swerved just in time to avoid the closing folds. Ke was aware of her, j but not of her alarm. He was excited. proud of his successful hunt. ; yet cool enough to remember his | newly-learnt lesson. The salmon was ■ fart in the net. He carefully bit it through. And it was not until then that he tried to move back, and found that the gentle movement of his flippers was retared. Still cool, he tried to move ahead, and in doing so brought the folds of the net more closely about him. He tried moving sideways. The not grew even tighter. Alarmed, he let go of the fish. He tried to bite through the strangs that were now cutting against his face. He could get no hold on them, however: they slipped between his teeth. Suddenly, panic-stricken, he ufade a frantic effort to break loose, dragging the whole net backwards and forwards through the water, straining at its moorings, at the very ropes, which, as the mother knew too well, were now being hauled on beard by the approaching fishermen. And it was this last fact, and the j special peril it implied, that inspired ; the mother seal’s actions. From the j first she had realised her impotence to extricate him. Had she torn at the net. or attempted to use her prodigious strength to break it, the re- j suit would have been only to make its j folds more secure about the body of her son. He had already succeeded in tying himself up so tightly that he could scarcely move. She did not look at him again, however. Clear through the water, she could hear the sound of the beat’s approach. She turned suddenly towards the shore and swam half-way up the cove. She came to the surface. Then, keeping perfectly j still, she looked at the boat. There ; were two men in it. One was hauling ‘ at the net. The other was standing j near him. holding a long, heavy piece j of wood in his hands, and staring in- ! tentiy into the water. They were i talking excitedly:— “I’ve get its weight,” the one who was 1 hauling shouted. “It’s either a por- ; poise or a seal. We can’t pull him j into the boat alive. Let him have it I hard soon as you see him. It’ll be a j ten bob government reward if it’s a seal.” “And I’ll bet it’s done a sight more than ten bob’s damage to the net,” , the other answered, angrily. “As well as the fish it’ll have eaten. Drat it! j Next time we’ll have a gun. I” let him j have it all light. Can you see any- 1 thing yet?” “Not yet. It’s twisted the net. It’s j all in a mess. There’s a salmon com- ) ing, though. I can see it shining. Look out. It’s there. A porpoise! No —it’s a seal. Here —give us a hand to j

get the net untwisted. Then we'll get him to the top. I'll bet it’s that salmon he’s been after. Lock, its head's off. "eon as you see the varmint's , head leave go the net. and let him | have it on his snout. That’s the spot ! to kill a seal!” I Had the mother seal understood exactly what the men were saying she i could not have had a clearer idea of their intenlons. Slowly, soundlessly, | she began to move towards the beat, j She was abeam of it when she sarted: i slightly abeam, and astern when she paused again, and not more than three times her own length away. If the 1 men hacl turned they might have seen her. They were too intent on their vengeance to do this. They had hauled the tangle of net in which the young seal was wrapped to the surface. They were unfouling the net as they brought it on board. ' Suddenly one ow them shouted:— ••Look cut!" There was a noisy splashing .The ! mother seal saw the other man stand up. and seize the piece of wood. And ; then she shot forward like a torpedo. ! “Steady. Steady. Wait till I clear i him. You can't hit him while the ! net's in the way. Wait till you see his nose. Steady now. I'll give the net a shake. Now! Quick! He’ll get away! There! Hit him. Now he's got his | nose up!” The folds of the net had loosened l on the young seal's body. Bewildered j by the shouts, however, with all the air I driven from his lungs, he could do no more than swim feebly along under the very gunwales of the boat within i easy range of the waiting fisherman. ! The latter raised his weapon. He struck with all his might at the seal’s upturned sneut. But the blow did not fall as he inI tended. As he struck, like a breaking wave the mother seal had charged ! j alongside the boat. With her teeth j bared in a savage, terrifying snarl, she 1 rose head and shoulders from the j water. The fisherman gave a shout of alarm. Those gleaming teeth actually ; touched his descending arm. : But the seal had no intention of hurting him. She was aware of one ! thing, and one thing only, hen son. , ■ She caught his body against her broad i chest. By the sheer force of that imj pact she pushed him clear out of the j way of that murderous weapon. The ! blow fell upon her own shoulders. She 1 scarcely felt it, for she saw her son ! swimming vigorously, she saw him dive. ! She dived herself, her tail sending a | shower of cold spray into the astonished fisherman's face. Yet as she did so ; she saw a familiar white gleam in the water beneath her. and she modified , her rescent into a spiral swoop, which j took her back almost under the boat j again, before she turned to join her ! son on his way to the open sea. And when, three minutes later, the two | outlaws broke water, far beyond sight !or hearing of the boat, the mother ' carefully made halves of her son’s salmon, and give him his share with excellent grace. It was the end of his lesson.